Re: Debian testing - release number
On Thu, Jul 5, 2018 at 3:46 PM Greg Wooledge <wooledg@eeg.ccf.org> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Jul 05, 2018 at 03:27:44PM -0500, Nicholas Geovanis wrote:
> > (1) You foolishly relied on the value in /etc/debian_version when
>
> It is not a fucking configuration file that you edit.
> It is supposed to be read only.
> Only a crazy idiot would manually edit the file that tells you what
> version of the OS you're running.
> It would be like editing registry entries in Microsoft Windows to make
> it look like you're running a different version of Windows.
All perfectly correct, valid statements in my view Greg.
But that wasn't my question.
Question: What is the correct tool to TELL you what Debian version you
are running?
Mr. Armstrong suggests that dpkg is a better choice and that sounds better than
the apt-related commands. But Joe A followed up with:
"But it's odd that you're the first to point out (indirectly) that
knowing the version of Debian isn't that useful."
I did no such thing. I think it's very useful. But what I'm trying to
point out here
is that there seems to be no such canonical (sic) Debian tool which CAN tell me
what release and version I'm running. Otherwise the answer from Joe Armstrong
would have been more like "run command XYZ which tells you version=3.4.5".
So there doesn't seem to be such a tool. That was my point.
Now we know that the answer "look at /etc/debian_version" is the wrong answer.
So again: What is the correct, intended, standard Debian tool which tells me
the installed, running Debian release and version number?
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